ECM Growth Boosts IT/Consultant Partnerships

For the first time, organizations are truly deploying enterprise content management (ECM) technologies on an organization-wide basis. As a result, IT departments have stepped up their expertise and skills to ensure support for mission-critical, company-wide applications.

This has introduced struggles with regard to who is doing ECM planning and configuration work -- the IT group or the ECM consulting company, or both. The question has become: Can IT and the consulting shops work harmoniously together?

In some cases, the IT folks are clamoring for complete responsibility and task ownership. In others, it is the consultancy that is seeking responsibility and ownership. And herein lies the conflict.

In the “proprietary days” of departmental ECM solutions, it didn’t make sense for IT to fully invest in learning about the technologies involved, so they’d lean heavily on the ECM consulting shops to provide most, if not all, of the services.

With more ECM standardization being employed, the smarter IT shops now see a new model of partnership as a viable approach. In these cases, ECM consulting shops may be enlisted to provide distinct expertise to complement the expertise contained within IT. Sometimes, ECM consultants can augment IT staff.

It is important to ensure that there is clarity around communications, roles and responsibilities, and deliverables. The following table serves as a good representation of partnership considerations:

Table 1: ECM IT/Consulting Partnership Considerations

It is important to stress that the representation above is simply a framework for discussion and will vary by organization and the participating ECM consulting shops. Nonetheless, let's take a closer look at the various considerations.

Corporate standards: IT typically owns these standards, and the consultants are usually not familiar with them unless a series of ongoing projects takes place. Consultants can provide insights and shared experiences from other projects that may be of value to the IT group. In certain cases, consultants also add a lot of value when assisting with corporate-wide deployments as they regularly manage multiple ECM projects and incorporate a program management approach to orchestrating these in a coherent fashion.

Internal corporate knowledge: By virtue of working for the organization, IT is typically familiar with the unique processes and business issues of the organization. They understand the dynamics and politics that exist among different groups and how sensitive issues must be addressed.

Subject matter expertise: This is the first area in which ECM consulting shops can start to introduce substantial value in comparison to the areas referred to above. Typically, consultants will focus their energies in a particular vertical area, solution set, or specific business practice. As a result, they typically have in-depth expertise that can complement the broader skill sets and expertise found within IT.

Comparative experiences: As a byproduct of subject matter expertise, ECM consulting shops earn their salt by leveraging similar experiences that may be applicable to your organization. This provides a level of breadth to complement depth of subject matter expertise. It is even more beneficial when the ECM consulting shops track statistics and comparative data points relevant to your organization.

Vendor/industry relationships: ECM consulting shops are compelled to stay close to the ECM industry through the development of key vendor and industry relationships. The value associated with these relationships can manifest itself in a variety of ways. This may include a faster path for problem resolution, awareness of emerging ECM trends, and a network of people for comparison of notes.

SharePoint, which could serve as the poster child for this article, introduces another important and unique element. Specifically, as so many companies have standardized on other Microsoft stack technologies (Windows, SQL, IIS, etc.), there is typically a line of demarcation introduced between the infrastructure and the business application. In this context, many IT shops support the foundational infrastructure and rely on internal project-manager/business-analysts for the business applications. Writing these business apps may be an appropriate role for the ECM consultant in your organization.

For some readers, these points may be stating the obvious. For many, however, having a series of focal points allows for a discussion to be held internally or with the ECM consultants to establish demonstrable measures of value.

In cases where an IT shop is fully staffed and has a great deal of experience and capacity, it may be beneficial to obtain subject matter expertise for a targeted solution. If the expertise is well established within IT and personnel, it may be appropriate to seek staff-augmentation from the ECM consulting shop.

Be it one extreme or someplace in between, there is usually some type of partnership that can be established that introduces benefits for all.

— Russ Edelman, President and CEO, Corridor Consulting

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